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WORK TITLE: The Battle Within
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://www.inkshares.com/books/the-battle-within
CITY: Ottawa
STATE: ON
COUNTRY: Canada
NATIONALITY: Canadian
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Married; children: two daughters.
EDUCATION:Royal Military College of Canada, B.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Canadian Army, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, lieutenant colonel; author.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Alastair Luft’s debut novel, The Battle Within, draws on his two decades’ worth of experience in the Canadian military to tell a story about the struggle returning veterans often have with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. “In 2002, Luft’s platoon was part of an infantry company involved in a nighttime training exercise at a place called Tarnak Farm,” explained Nina Grossman in the Rocky View Weekly. “As they were shooting weapons on a practice range, a fleet of American planes flew over the infantry. In the darkness, he said, the Americans thought they were seeing flashes of light below from enemy activity and they started dropping bombs.” As a result of the mistake, four members of Luft’s own company were killed and ten wounded. Three of the soldiers killed were from Luft’s own platoon. “Two important things the military taught me,” Luft declared in an autobiographical statement found on his website, the Alastair Luft Website, “were to learn from my mistakes and that time spent on reconnaissance is seldom wasted.”
The Battle Within tells the story of Hugh Dégaré, a major in the Canadian military, who is haunted by his experiences. His memories are damaging his marriage, and his attempts to reconnect with a close comrade further disillusion him. “Luft’s book is an honest and nonjudgmental account of a soldier’s journey after returning home from war,” wrote a Kirkus Reviews contributor. “Hugh’s daily battles are compounded by the fact that life goes on, from his wife’s tragic pregnancy and the funeral of a friend to his father-in-law’s efforts to undermine him.” “Set in a backdrop of war in Afghanistan,” said a reviewer for the Frontline Defense website, “the story captures the obstacles arrayed against serving members and veterans who want nothing more than to serve their country and have a normal life.”
Critics praised Luft’s debut novel for its unflinching portrait of PTSD. “The Battle Within is nothing short of phenomenal: a book that will keep readers engaged from cover to cover, and leave them thinking long after turning the final page,” enthused Steve Leonard on the Modern War Institute website. “The book itself is not a long read, but a necessary one. The Battle Within is the kind of book that sparks a professional dialog that we all need to have.” “The Battle Within,” concluded Joel Redekop in Ottawa Life, “removes the stigma that often plagues mental challenges such as PTSD, instead displaying the courage and strength that is needed to overcome it.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, November 15, 2017, review of The Battle Within.
Ottawa Life, http://www.ottawalife.com/ (March 17, 2017), Joel Redekop, review of The Battle Within.
ONLINE
Alastair Luft Website, http://alastairluft.com (March 28, 2018), author profile.
Frontline Defense, http://defence.frontline.online/ (June 8, 2017), review of The Battle Within.
Modern War Institute, https://mwi.usma.edu/ (July 5, 2017), Steve Leonard, “A Fictional Story of PTSD That Is All too Real.”
Rocky View Weekly, http://www.rockyviewweekly.com/ (April 29, 2016), Nina Grossman, “Local Vet Crowdfunds Support for Novel on PTSD.”
Alastair Luft is a lieutenant colonel in the Canadian Army with twenty years of service in the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry. Luft graduated from the Royal Military College of Canada with a BA in politics and economics. He lives in Ottawa with his wife and two daughters, and except for his multiple tours of duty around the world, he has spent the greater part of his life in eastern Ontario. The Battle Within is his first novel.
I’m Alastair, a 20-year veteran of the Canadian military and more importantly, on the first leg of a nascent writing journey. Up until 2 years ago, I was on track to be a career soldier, but things changed when I took parental leave following the birth of my second daughter.
During that time (with the patience of my loving wife) I began writing. By the time I went back to work, I had not only finished the second draft of a novel, I’d also discovered that writing had become my passion. With that, I decided to take an off ramp towards the road less traveled, finishing my first novel and tackling subsequent projects.
My debut novel, The Battle Within, was published in June 2017. A story about a Canadian soldier struggling to come to terms with PTSD, the novel was published with Inkshares. I’m also working on a second novel, Jihadi Bride.
As I get my feet under me, I’m looking to apply many of the valuable lessons from my years of service. Two important things the military taught me was to learn from my mistakes and that time spent on reconnaissance is seldom wasted. Now, it’s time to put those skills to good use so others can benefit from my experiences. In the spirit of that sentiment, I’ve started a single person pathfinding blog to help other fledgling writers by detailing my errors, what’s worked and what hasn’t, and maybe, just maybe, the odd success.
No matter what your reason for visiting this site, I hope you’ll find a unique perspective that you can draw on, either through my stories or my blog entries. Conversely, I look forward to hearing about other people’s challenges as we sit around the virtual campfire and trade writing war stories.
Luft, Alastair: THE BATTLE WITHIN
Kirkus Reviews. (Nov. 15, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Luft, Alastair THE BATTLE WITHIN Inkshares (Indie Fiction) $15.99 6, 17 ISBN: 978-1-942645-49-8
A major in the Canadian military battles PTSD, torn between the influences of a psychologist he feels fails to understand him and an angry friend and ex-soldier.
In this debut novel, Maj. Hugh DAaAaAeA@garAaAaAeA@ wakes up one night to his w Elizabeth, in tears, recoiling from him in fear after his nightmares caused him to strike her in his sleep. These dreams have haunted him for two years, since his third tour of Afghanistan ended. This, along with his anger, depression, and sexual dysfunction, forces Hugh to admit he has PTSD. But he still serves in the military, dealing with a boring desk job at Canada's National Defense Headquarters, and fears the stigma of mental illness that will be attached to him if his condition is discovered. He begrudgingly begins seeing Dr. John Taylor, but the therapy is challenging, and Hugh feels that the physician cannot appreciate what it is like to be a soldier. For further help, he reconnects with his old army buddy Daryl Robertson, but Daryl has grown bitter and cruel after losing both legs in combat. He now spends his days railing against the government for the poor care it provides veterans, suggesting the public needs a drastic--perhaps violent--wake-up call. Luft's book is an honest and nonjudgmental account of a soldier's journey after returning home from war. Hugh's daily battles are compounded by the fact that life goes on, from his wife's tragic pregnancy and the funeral of a friend to his father-in-law's efforts to undermine him. Each stressor only pushes Hugh further away from being OK again. Therapy is approached in realistic terms, acknowledging that treatment will often open old wounds never properly healed. It forces Hugh to recount and confront his time and actions in Bosnia and Afghanistan. Hugh's and Daryl's frustrations with the replacement of the regimented aspects of the service with the bureaucracies of civilian life are understandable, though not excusable, reasons for their actions, from Daryl's abuse toward his wife to Hugh's growing comfort in withdrawing from Elizabeth. Hugh starts to spend more time alone with his anger and Daryl's firearms, considering turning them on himself or even others. To heal, Hugh must figure out how it all went bad, and the reader discovers each heartbreaking detail along with him.
Crushingly intimate, a remarkably accurate and poignant dissection of PTSD.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Luft, Alastair: THE BATTLE WITHIN." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Nov. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A514267654/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=29309d15. Accessed 16 Feb. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A514267654
Book Review: The Battle Within
Book Review: The Battle Within
The Battle Within
By Alastair Luft
353 Pages • ISBN: 978-1942645498
According to the U.S. National Centre of PTSD, 8 million people will struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, during any given year. The disease manifests itself in both physically, through neurological or cardiovascular issues, and mentally, torturing the victim with feelings of depression, guilt, and perpetual tension. The mark of PTSD comes with an inherent sense of guilt and alienation. Alastair Luft breaks through this stigma with his debut novel, The Battle Within.
The novel is a war story without the warzone. Major Hugh Degare is at a major turning point in his career, transitioning from active combat to desk jockey. To his dread, his old battles have been replaced with new ones – internal ones. He can’t sleep. He’s tormented by horrible memories of combat. The Battle Within follows Degare’s attempts to maintain his sanity, turning to his loved ones and psychologists. After nothing seems to alleviate him of his past traumas, he finally turns to the broken and questionable military medical system.
Luft’s novel features thoughtful psychological design, driving this character study along at a thriller’s pace. Ultimately, at the centre of the novel is Dagare’s earnest love for his family, something that is just as important to him as his mental health itself. The realism of Luft’s prose adds extra dimensions the story. Luft is a 20-year veteran of the Canadian military, having been deployed in Afghanistan six times. This is not only felt in the flashbacks to battle, but in the transition to civilian life as well. Luft himself has only faced life away from the battlefield in the past few years, following the birth of his second daughter.
Despite being a novel primarily about coping with mental health, it has all the energy of a war novel whose primary plot points rotate around explosions and Kevlar. The Battle Within removes the stigma that often plagues mental challenges such as PTSD, instead displaying the courage and strength that is needed to overcome it.
By: Joel Redekop
A Fictional Story of PTSD That is All Too Real
Steve Leonard | July 5, 2017
A Fictional Story of PTSD That is All Too Real
Alastair Luft, The Battle Within (Inkshares Books, 2017)
In a 2005 monograph on the practice of military psychiatry in the twentieth century, Edgar Jones and Simon Wessely, psychiatrists from the Weston Education Centre in London, wrote prophetically about the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) phenomenon:
In recent years, one could be forgiven for thinking that PTSD is the main mental health problem facing the modern military. Certainly, judging by the popular press and the current ‘PTSD debates’, posttrauma psychiatric injury is much in the public eye.
Though writing about the study of PTSD in the aftermath of the defining conflicts of the previous century, Jones and Wessely could just as easily have been writing about what was to come. After nearly sixteen years of seemingly incessant war, a day rarely passes without some mention of PTSD, and not typically in a positive sense. The specter of suicide looms ominously in the shadows, and it’s not uncommon to find the topic raised whenever a veteran is in crisis or some form of legal trouble. But, as much as we know about PTSD, it remains a very personal battle—an internal struggle from which many never return.
There is no shortage of literature on the subject today. Whether in the traditional mainstream media, social media, clinical studies, or the local bookstore, discourse on PTSD has reached a crescendo in recent years. Thousands of books on the subject are currently available, with more going into print every week. Into that literary melee, first-time author Alastair Luft introduces The Battle Within, a remarkable novel about a combat veteran coming to terms with his own struggle with PTSD.
From the opening paragraph, Luft hits hard and fast with the fictional story of Canadian infantry Maj. Hugh Dégaré, whose journey into—and out of—the abyss of war will feel all too familiar to readers. The writing is so fluid and so captivating that it is easy to forget that this is a novel and not someone’s personal narrative of Hell on Earth. If the subject matter isn’t enough to hold a reader’s attention, Luft’s writing will. The prose is exceptionally tight, the story gripping and personal, and the emotion so striking it bleeds onto the page. In other words, a story of pain, suffering, redemption, and recovery that captures what many of us have seen or experienced in our own lives.
For Luft, himself a lieutenant colonel in the Canadian Armed Forces and a multi-tour combat veteran, The Battle Within represents his first foray into fiction as well as his first book-length writing effort. Seeing the impact of PTSD over five tours in Afghanistan, he completed the first draft in just six weeks while working to create something of meaning that could help others develop a better understanding of what was happening to the troops around him, both physically and mentally.
Recognizing that PTSD has become an integral part of the fabric of our military culture, Luft created something unique that will strike a chord with readers, both military and civilian. By leveraging fiction to tell the story of Hugh Dégaré, he embraces a literary freedom that allows for a much more vivid and edgy tale, adding a sense of realism that can prove elusive even in nonfiction works. Personalizing the issue through the trauma of Dégaré bring the story to life with a sense of tragedy that is as difficult to read as it is to forget. The pain, suffering, and helplessness consuming Dégaré seem all too real, all too familiar.
The Battle Within is nothing short of phenomenal: a book that will keep readers engaged from cover to cover, and leave them thinking long after turning the final page. The book itself is not a long read, but a necessary one. The Battle Within is the kind of book that sparks a professional dialog that we all need to have.
Steve Leonard is a co-founder of Divergent Options, a former senior military strategist, and the creative force behind Doctrine Man!! He is a founding member of the Military Writers Guild and a frequent contributor to the Atlantic Council’s Art of Future Warfare Project. His writing focuses on issues of foreign policy, national security, strategy and planning, leadership and leader development, and, occasionally, fiction. An alumnus of the School of Advanced Military Studies, he led the interagency team that authored the US Army’s first stability operations doctrine, spearheaded the reintroduction of operational art into capstone doctrine, and wrote the guiding principles for the Army Design Methodology. He is the author of four books, numerous professional articles, countless blog posts, and is a prolific military cartoonist. Follow his writing on his personal blog, The Pendulum, and on Twitter at @Doctrine_Man. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the US government.
Disclaimer
The articles and other content which appear on the Modern War Institute website are unofficial expressions of opinion. The views expressed are those of the authors, and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
The Modern War Institute does not screen articles to fit a particular editorial agenda, nor endorse or advocate material that is published. Rather, the Modern War Institute provides a forum for professionals to share opinions and cultivate ideas. Comments will be moderated before posting to ensure logical, professional, and courteous application to article content.
Local vet crowdfunds support for novel on PTSD
Friday, Apr 29, 2016 03:43 pm
By: Nina Grossman
After Kathryn native Alastair Luft served six tours in Afghanistan he wrote The Battle Within, a novel about a Canadian soldier with post-traumatic stress disorder
Submitted /For Rocky View Publishing
Kathryn native and Canadian veteran Alastair Luft is using Inkshare to crowdfund his new novel, The Battle Within, about a soldier struggling with the after-effects of combat. The book is loosely based on Luft’s experience after service and those of friends and fellow soldiers who struggled with mental and emotional trauma after their time in the military.
Luft grew up on his parents’ farm in Kathryn. He attended Kathryn School and Beiseker Community School while helping out at the farm and staying involved in school and community sports.
After high school, Luft attended the University of Calgary for a semester where he visited a recruitment centre and became interested in the Canadian Armed Forces.
Luft was interested in the officer training plan, where the military paid for the university education of those recruited before they did their service. It was a combination of the paid education benefits of the plan and the chance to have an exciting military career that led him to sign up for the armed forces.
Shortly after 9/11, Luft started his first tour in Afghanistan. Luft, a young and eager soldier, headed overseas for the first of six tours he would serve in the Middle East.
In 2002, Luft’s platoon was part of an infantry company involved in a nighttime training exercise at a place called Tarnak Farm. As they were shooting weapons on a practice range, a fleet of American planes flew over the infantry. In the darkness, he said, the Americans thought they were seeing flashes of light below from enemy activity and they started dropping bombs. One of the bombs killed three soldiers from Luft’s platoon.
By the end of the friendly-fire incident, there would be four dead and 10 wounded. Luft said the incident was one of the driving forces behind his novel and gave him perspective on what it’s like to be under attack.
“The survivors of the friendly-fire attack had a range of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms that manifested,” he said. “These included normal responses like survivor’s guilt.”
While Luft himself doesn’t suffer from PTSD, he turned to other veterans for insight while writing his novel. The Battle Within is about a fictional character named Hugh Denare, a Canadian soldier who has been fighting for the Armed Forces and has returned home to his friends and family, only to fight the biggest battle of his life with PTSD and the lingering effects from trauma he endured overseas.
Luft said the title of the novel was inspired by the daily struggles of people who live with PTSD.
“It’s this internal struggle to try to be the better person when every fiber of their being is telling them to do something else and react and lash out based off of trying to process all of these adverse stimuli,” he said.
Luft said his novel will help people understand the ongoing struggles of those who serve in the military.
“I’m hoping (readers) will gain some insight into what its like to be a soldier in Canada… so they get an appreciation for some of the situations that soldiers are placed in when they are asked to serve overseas.”
Luft emphasized his novel is not for personal profit but something he wrote to raise money and awareness. He is raising funds for the novel using Inkshare and needs 750 pre-orders before it can be published.
If the goal is reached by the deadline, Luft will donate two dollars from every pre-sale to Soldier On, a Canadian non-profit organization that provides rehabilitation and support for physically and emotionally wounded soldiers and their families.
Luft now lives in Ottawa with his wife and two young daughters. He currently has no scheduled deployments but is still a member of the Canadian military.
Anyone interested in supporting Luft’s novel can go to inkshares.com/books/the-battle-within to pre-order a copy of the book.
The Rocky View Weekly welcomes your opinions and comments. We do not allow personal attacks, offensive language or unsubstantiated allegations. We reserve the right to delete comments deemed inappropriate. We reserve the right to close the comments thread for stories that are deemed especially sensitive. For further information, please contact the editor or publisher.
FRONTLINE IN THE NEWS
The Battle Within - book signing 24 June
Jun 08, 2017
Alastair Luft, a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Canadian Army with 20 years of service in the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, experienced some of the symptoms that would be associated with critical incident stress – such as survivor’s guilt and rage – during his decades of service. His background equipped him to counsel numerous subordinates and colleagues who suffer from PTSD, and the culmination of all of those experiences formed the inspiration for his upcoming novel, THE BATTLE WITHIN, publishing in paperback from Inkshares.
THE BATTLE WITHIN journeys deep inside a troubled soldier struggling to adapt to life after combat. Set in a backdrop of war in Afghanistan, the story captures the obstacles arrayed against serving members and veterans who want nothing more than to serve their country and have a normal life, yet who struggle with the reality and stigma of PTSD. In this compelling book, Luft shares his perspectives on the meaning of service, sacrifice, and the effect of violence on a person’s humanity.
After reading an advance copy, retired General Raymond R. Henault, former Chief of the Defence Staff, Canadian Forces, offered this comment:
“Although this novel is a work of fiction, it shines a searing light on the real-life challenges and sometimes tragic consequences of PTSD.”
Retired Lieutenant-General Michael K. Jeffery, former Chief of the Land Staff, Canadian Armed Forces, echoed this sentiment. “Alastair Luft has made a major contribution to our knowledge of PTSD by putting a personal face on ‘the battle within,’ which will serve both soldier and citizen alike.”
The author will be having his book launch reading/signing at Perfect Books in Ottawa on June 24th from 2-4pm. The event is open to the public.
In this story, a Canadian soldier struggles with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, risking his marriage, career, and life itself in a bid for redemption. After reading his advance copy, retired Major-General Lewis MacKenzie noted that “Anyone who wishes to understand, no matter what their background, the silent curse of PTSD would benefit from reading this compelling story.”